The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 12, no. 1 (2000)

ARTICLES

Implementing Treaty Settlements via Indigenous Institutions: Social Justice and Detribalization in New Zealand, p. 1
Marilyn E LashleyAbstract: This study examines treaty settlement as a mechanism for providing social justice and incorporating Maori people into mainstream New Zealand society by improving economic and social well-being. Articles II and III of the Treaty of Waitangi (respectively, collectively held private assets and citizenship benefits and privileges), are described and discussed, along with settlement of claims of breached treaty rights, social policy targeted to Maori, and changes in economic and social well-being from 1976 to 1998. The fundamental proposition is that all Maori are harmed by the legacy of dispossession and marginalization and, therefore, all Maori are entitled to social justice. The central question addresses the role of the state in providing redress to all indigenous New Zealanders, collectives and individuals, for breaches of both Article II and Article III treaty rights. However, urbanization and detribalization limit access to social justice, and the benefits of treaty settlements have yet to trickle down to individual Maori households. Changes in aggregate indicators of well-being indicate modest improvement in the first decade, and thereafter Maori people experience greater and increasing income inequality, unemployment, and poverty than other population subgroups. To explain these findings, the following questions are addressed: What is the relationship between detribalization and access to treaty settlement assets? What strategies should the government undertake to provide redress (to individual Maori as well as tribal collectives) for breaches of Article III treaty rights?Keywords: detribalization, Maori, New Zealand social policy, social justice, treaty settlement, Waitangi

Fact or Fable? The Consequences of Migration for Educational Achievement and Labor Market Participation, p. 57
Cluny Macpherson, Richard Bedford, and Paul SpoonleyAbstract: Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, people moved from the Pacific Islands to New Zealand in the expectation that their children would enjoy improved life chances, which they believed would follow from improved quality and availability of formal education in New Zealand. The greater educational opportunities would be translated into improved opportunities in the labor market in the form of higher incomes, higher levels of labor market participation, and upward occupational mobility. This paper explores the origins of these beliefs about education and uses statistical data to establish whether the migrants’ expectations were realized.Keywords:education, labor, migration, New Zealand, Samoa

Reconciling Ethnicity and Nation: Contending Discourses in Fiji’s Constitutional Reform, p. 83
Robert NortonAbstract: The process of Fiji’s recent constitutional reform highlighted the dilemma of reconciling a principle of indigenous Fijian paramountcy with an imperative to shape a multiethnic nation for which non-Fijian, particularly Indian, contributions have long been crucial. The article addresses this dilemma in a discussion of the dominant themes in public discourse about constitutional change, and the relation of these themes to the values, pressures, and opportunities of three arenas: ethnic, national, and international. Three contrasting paradigms for the nation are identified: a universalist vision grounded in international human rights ideology, an exclusionary Fijian ethnonationalism affirmed most strongly in the army coups of 1987 and their aftermath, and an interethnic accommodation and partnership in which leading Fijian chiefs continue to have a stabilizing and legitimating function. The last model prevailed in the constitutional reform, demonstrating a continuity with trends in the shaping of political culture during colonial and early postcolonial times. The story of the constitutional reform is in part the saga of how the ethnonationalist coup maker who became prime minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, has tried to remake himself as a national leader. In the crucial role he eventually assumed as overseer of reform, he depended on support from chiefs and their councils. The paper concludes, against much of the postcoup literature on Fiji, that over the long term the major significance of the chiefs in the national political arena is not as a privileged “vested interest” group obstructing a solution to the problem of establishing a viable democratic polity, but as part of this solution.Keywords: chiefs, constitutional reform, ethnicity, Fiji, nation, political change, Rabuka

Festival Mania, Tourism, and Nation-Building in Fiji: The Case of the Hibiscus Festival, 1956-1970, p. 123
Claus BossenAbstract: Why did festivals proliferate in all urban centers in Fiji in the late 1950s and 1960s to the extent that one official talked about “festival mania”? Today the Hibiscus Festival in Suva, the Sugar Festival in Lautoka, the Bula Festival in Nadi, and various other festivals have become natural parts of the national culture. However, when the festivals were started they were constructed as tourist attractions that should lure tourists to Fiji. Thus, the development of the festivals from being constructed tourist events to become part of the national culture points to some of the unexpected ways in which tourism links up with national identity. From 1950 to independence in 1970 three parallel processes of change took place in Fiji: Tourism became a major industry thus alleviating the economic dependence on sugar-production, urbanization created a new urban space for social interaction and public discussion, and a national identity had to be created as it became apparent that Fiji would cease to be a British colony and become independent. In this paper I will discuss how these processes of change condensed into “festival mania” focusing on the years from 1950 to independence in 1970.Keywords: festivals, Fiji, national identity, tourism

Transforming the Insider-Outsider Perspective: Postcolonial Fiction from the Pacific, p. 155
Sandra TawakeAbstract: Historically, the perspective assumed in writing about the Pacific until 1970 presented Pacific peoples through European eyes in roles of spectators and objects of European desires. After the beginning of what Paul Sharrad called an “authentic” Pacific literature, the perspective shifted to one that viewed life through the eyes of Pacific peoples. For example, “Parade” by Patricia Grace can be read as a trope of the transforming power of the insider perspective. When the insider perspective is examined in postcolonial terms, it is clear that “there can hardly be such a thing as an essential inside that can be homogeneously represented by all insiders” (Minhha 1995, 218). The realities of contemporary writers from the Pacific illustrate the complications in claiming privilege for Pacific voices because they are native. New fiction from the Pacific during the 1990s exhibits its postcolonial identity through the perspectives it adopts, through innovations in language use, and through its ability to transform traditional images of society and culture into images of postcoloniality.Keywords: Alan Duff, contemporary Pacific fiction, Sia Figiel, Witi Ihimaera, Maori writers, postcolonial writing, Samoan writers, John Pule

After Moruroa: France in the South Pacific, by Nic Maclellan and Jean Chesnaux, and Moruroa and Us: Polynesians’ Experiences during Thirty Years of Nuclear Testing in the French Pacific, by Peter de Vries and Han Seur, p. 284
Reviewed by David A Chappell

Bougainville 1988-98: Five Searches for Security in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea, by Karl Claxton, p. 287
Reviewed by Eugene Ogan